Patients with multiple sclerosis have higher zinc levels in plasma and in their red blood cells.
- Multiple sclerosis is the leading cause of severe non-traumatic disability in young adults in France.
- Currently, there is no treatment to cure multiple sclerosis but only to relieve patients and improve their quality of life.
According to‘Inserm, 110,000 people are affected by multiple sclerosis in France. It is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system and leads to immune system dysfunction. This condition no longer protects the patient from external attacks and even turns against his own cells, attacking the myelin that surrounds and protects the nerve fibers.
Because of the damage, the nerve fibers no longer correctly transmit the messages sent by the brain to the rest of the body, and vice versa. Patients with this disease can also suffer from various problems: motor, sensory, cognitive, etc. In the more or less long term, these disorders can progress to an irreversible handicap.
A disease visible in the blood
According to a new study, which will be published in October 2022 in the review Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders, multiple sclerosis would not only be visible at the level of the nervous system. It would also be in the blood. More precisely, by the blood level of zinc which is higher in these patients than in the others.
To shed light on this phenomenon, the researchers conducted an experiment on 98 people. Half of them had multiple sclerosis, the others did not suffer from it. In all the participants, they separated the red blood cells from the liquid part of the blood called “plasma”. Then they measured average zinc levels.
more zinc
Results: Patients with multiple sclerosis had higher plasma zinc levels than those without the disease. In detail, the former had 94 micrograms per deciliter (mcg / dl), against 81.5 mcg / dl for the latter.
Another observation: the participants affected by multiple sclerosis had average values of the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), namely an enzyme which needs zinc to function correctly (i.e. to protect cells free radicals and oxidative stress), greater than in non-patients.
“An adaptive defense mechanism”
“Increased antioxidant enzyme production in inflammatory lesions of multiple sclerosis may reflect an adaptive, endogenous, and compensatory defense mechanism to reduce cellular damage caused by reactive oxygen species (i.e. free radicals), explain the authors. However, this increase may be insufficient to counter the cellular damage induced by free radicals.“.
Fewer relapses
On the other hand, the scientists also observed that a high activity of SOD, itself linked to higher levels of zinc in the red blood cells, reduced the risks of relapses for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. “Erythrocyte zinc (white blood cells) is positively correlated with SOD activity in the group of participants with multiple sclerosis, which, in response, reduces its activity in the presence of relapses and consequent decompensation of the disease“, conclude the researchers.
